


Somewhat Alien and Deadly

by dimplelegacy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempt at horror, M/M, Pining, Post Season 8, Rating May Change, Space Parasites, Suspense, Yeah we're doing that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 10:28:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25469305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimplelegacy/pseuds/dimplelegacy
Summary: In the Astral Plane, Shiro tries to protect what is most precious to him from the unknown enemy. In reality, Keith fears he has to do the same, once again.Or: another tale about how Shiro wasn't Shiro after all.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Somewhat Alien and Deadly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackxpaladins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackxpaladins/gifts).



> For Ana, for her birthday! <3 Late, ofc, because it's not finished yet. The idea for this fic came from her.

_ “You’re gonna make it.” _

Shiro wasn’t surprised that a boy like Keith couldn’t accept it. Death was a monster to him, an enemy, Shiro had always understood that. It was futile to make him adapt to the situation Shiro had always lived with and maybe it was his fault, in a way; he had never let the illness stop him from living, never was the premature end a reason for him to find an excuse to stop moving. No, that would have made his death meaningless, and disappearing without even a faint trace was what actually terrified him. 

With Keith by his side, till the very end, and the trust Shiro had for him always kept that fear away. If Keith survived and carried the weight of leadership after Shiro was gone, he knew everything would be alright. 

Everything would work out. He could only hope Keith would someday see that so now he settled on smiling at Keith fondly, a bit melancholically too, to support him and believe in him till he would know his strength and power on his own. 

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


Dying was quick. Letting go was ridiculously easy, except when it came to the things, the people, he treasured the most. But he was allowed to keep something with him, wasn’t he?

There was no white light nor blissful unconsciousness; though he was not aware of his body anymore, he knew he was dreaming, or maybe living the afterlife. The dreams were about the life he was never to have and he knew it.  _ He knew it _ .

How could he?

The all-consuming warmth embraced him gently but surely and then it was easier to stop thinking. Logic had no place in death nor dreams, fear didn’t matter when his reality had ceased to be. 

Yet, stubbornly he held onto those small memories, precious emotions, and fragments of his life.    
  
Keith. Piloting. The Black Lion. The feeling of sinking into the bottom of Adam’s couch and eating as much sugar as he wanted. His grandparents. Laughing with his team during another dull goo-breakfast.

Those were the things he never dreamed of but he didn’t question it. He kept them inside his soul so there was no reason for the afterlife to try and mimic them. 

“Always keep everything dearest here,” his grandfather had said to him when he was young and unsure about how to go on with his life after he was diagnosed. His palm had pressed against Shiro’s beating heart. “When you do that, Takashi, you’ve nothing to fear.”

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


_ Something is wrong _ . 

It woke him from his dream. 

Dream, it had always been a dream.

He wasn’t dead and something was very, very wrong. 

The warmth didn’t feel gentle anymore. 

It was crushing him.

  
  


-

  
  
  


The glowing gaze of the Black Lion still haunted him. 

“Haunting” sounded eerie, even in the privacy of his own mind; especially because the farewells of the Lions had clearly left everyone calm and serene, even Lance. Allura, if she were here, might have glared at him for the poor choice of word. 

Keith didn’t feel calm though. The silence was making him wary, even though Black had never been that loud in his head in the first place, especially compared to Red. The silence didn’t feel final and assuring; instead, it seemed to have a muted question for Keith. 

_ What is missing? _

He wasn’t sure if that was a question from Black or himself. 

There was only one person who could feel the same absence and uncertainty.

Just the idea of getting up, walking to Shiro’s room and…  _ talking  _ to him about it, didn’t feel like an option. Something had happened between them, something that made it impossible for Keith to lean on him like he always had before. 

Shiro was his rock, no matter the circumstances. But at that moment he felt less like a force and support keeping Keith on his feet, and more like a weight pressing his bones.

He visibly almost flinched at his own thoughts. 

_ Shiro’s not a burden. I never was one for him, how the hell can I even think that he’s weighing me down? _

But he couldn’t deny that ever since their travel back to Earth, Shiro’s presence had felt exhausting instead of comforting. 

He  _ loved _ Shiro. He just never had felt like it was this hard. 

Kosmo’s wet snout nudging his fingers woke him up from his thoughts and Keith gladly turned his attention at the space wolf. 

“I dunno what I should do, buddy,” he murmured to the wolf. 

Kosmo blinked his eyes at him and nuzzled his wrist, suggesting, “Go to sleep.”

Keith chuckled at the innocent expression the wolf had on his face. 

“Maybe you’re right. I’m overthinking again. Thanks for the advice.”

From now on, he would try to not worry about Shiro too much. Scratch that; he would try to not worry about Shiro and himself and their friendship.

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


Two months later, when Keith came back from a week-long mission of the Blades, Pidge pulled him into the canteen immediately when he set his foot on Garrison grounds. 

“Pidge, I smell like a wet dog. Can’t this wait for half an hour?”

“Never compare yourself to a dog, you’re a cat if anything,” she responded immediately as she led them to the table at the furthest corner. “And no, this can’t wait  _ at all. _ ”

“Something happened?” Keith tried to comb through his messy hair with his fingers while he waited for Pidge to get to the point. 

“Yeah, kinda,” she said, using her lowest tone to indicated how sarcastic she was being. “Did you know that Shiro was seeing one of his crew members?”

Keith accidentally pulled one or two strands as he heard the question. He wasn’t sure what kind of face he was making but he did feel like his eyebrows didn’t seem to know whether to remain raised or lowered. 

“Who?”

“Shiro?”

“No– Who is he seeing?”

“Curtis. The tall guy. With wide, wide shoulders.” Pidge spread her arms as if to show Keith the range of those shoulders. “Well, he was. I mean—”

“What?” 

An ugly feeling was poking the center of Keith’s chest. He couldn’t exactly name it but it was about to pierce his chest soon enough and go straight for his heart. 

“I really thought he would have told you. At least you.” Pidge looked extremely sad when she said those words. 

“He… no. He didn’t.”

Keith had not heard from Shiro in almost 3 weeks and the last time he spoke to him, had been during a meeting which meant they had discussed something as small and dumb as which Terran rocks should be included into a galactic assembly. 

“Well,” Pidge, always as straight-to-the-point as ever, said with a grimace. “I’m sorry you missed their dating phase. We all did. Because now they’re getting married.”

Keith pressed his nails against the skin of his palms and tried to breathe. 

_ Shiro, what’s happening to you? _

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


He didn’t know what it was and what it wanted but he was sure that it, unlike many other things in his life, wanted to keep him alive — for now. 

While he had been dreaming, he never realized how it was suffocating him, slowly and patiently, keeping him immobilized but still breathing. 

As it crushed his bones, it also tainted all the parts of his mind, his heart, pieces that made him Shiro. It took them and if he resisted, it tortured him because whatever it was, it seemed to know him and his fears. 

He was tired and he felt weaker than ever before. Still, when he felt it poke the memories of Keith, he could almost feel his own fists closing around the image of a reckless boy, turned to a young man with deep eyes.

  
_ You won’t touch him _ , he screamed.  _ Don’t you dare touch him. _

_ - _

He’d tried to brush off the small things. It had been easier to pretend nothing was wrong; with Shiro, with them. They had been through a lot and hard times only made friendships stronger, didn’t they? That was the most valuable thing he had learned. 

__

Keith didn’t want to regress back to his younger self who was sure, every minute of the day and every day of the week, that people would always leave him — even Shiro would eventually walk away from him without looking back. 

__

By now he knew the lies his brain tried to feed him but it didn’t shield him from the hurt Shiro’s silence and ignorance caused. 

__

Small things became big and then enormous, right after he heard of Shiro’s engagement. 

__

“I honestly feel like I don’t know him anymore,” Keith heard Pidge say beside him. They were sitting in her private room, a laboratory of sorts, on the floor while Pidge inspected a strange alien plant’s particle formula. Though it was clear she had trouble concentrating. 

__

Maybe the fact that Keith was so visibly shaken up was one reason for it. 

__

He did glare at Pidge though after she said those words. 

__

“Can you say you do?” she answered his glare with a challenging stare. “I think he speaks to you even less than he does to the rest of us.”

__

When Keith chose to say nothing, the hard set of Pidge’s jaw relaxed and her eyes turned almost sad.

__

“Sometimes I’m… scared. What if part of him didn’t come back—”

__

The memory of the clone’s, Shiro’s, glowing eyes, and the burn against Keith’s cheek was evoked alive, like a coma patient startling awake after years of sleep, by Pidge’s words. 

__

Keith’s breathing turned heavy. 

__

“No, Shiro’s fine. I’m sure of it,” his words came out so shaky that he felt like he was lying even though he meant what he said. 

__

“I guess…You do know him the best,” Pidge yielded though everything about the look on her face and the way she moved her rigid body signaled she wanted to argue. She waved her arm towards the exit. “I’ll let you hit that shower now.”

__

Keith himself could admit that nowadays he was a bit better at comforting his team members but he found Pidge to be the hardest to offer comfort to, despite her being the youngest of them. Maybe it was because now, like a handful of times in the past, he wasn’t sure what he had said to make her look so anxious and guarded. 

__

“I don’t know what’s going on with him but don’t worry too much. He gets stuck inside his head a lot and it’s better to just let him be till he figures it out.” Keith stood up and gave Pidge’s shoulder a squeeze. When it didn’t feel enough, he continued. “But if you want to talk to him about this, I’m sure he’ll listen.”

__

“You sound a bit like him,” she told him. “It’s weird, go back to being emo-Keith now.”

__

Keith decided to let her annoying nick-name for him slide for today and after quick see-yous, he headed towards the showers. 

__

Only when he was under the pressure of hot water and the echoing silence of the shower room, he let himself slump against the tiles and sighed.

__

_ Shiro’s getting married.  _

__

He could have fooled himself into thinking that the suddenness of the news was what hurt him the most — why now, without any warning, without any time for Keith to get used to the idea — but he didn’t have the strength to pretend. He felt like an idiot, standing there and trying to make his poor, dumb heart accept that Shiro would always, always be out of his reach.

__

Never his because now Shiro was someone else’s. 

__

As if he had ever had any hope or chance before. 

__

The weight of rejection and hurt, mixed with the realization that he had indeed somehow “grown apart” from his best friend, was what hit his knuckles against the tile; not once but twice and then once more. He punched the wall like it was his enemy and while it somewhat calmed down the storm inside his head, his hand protested painfully and blood dripped onto the floor. Keith watched it wash away with the water, down the drain and he wished his feelings could finally do the same — vanish somewhere dark.

__

He wanted to get Shiro back, as his friend because clearly they were no friends anymore. He didn’t know the reason for it but he would find it and make things right, as long as Shiro would want him too. And maybe he’d also find the power, from somewhere inside him, to congratulate him without any bit of pretend or pain in his voice.

__

Maybe tomorrow. For now, he’d lick his wounds.

_   
  
  
_

-

_   
  
  
_

He didn’t know what it was, what was its name or definite goal so he started to call it by what it was to him: a parasite. 

__

A dark, invisible parasite. Unlike most of the Terran ones, it didn’t have a disgusting appearance and it wasn’t easily detected. But Shiro could feel it, gnawing away his feelings, thoughts, and memories. 

__

He could feel it, not killing him, but destroying him, slowly. Fighting against it seemed to be futile and only make him weaker but if Shiro were to meet his end, he wouldn’t do it to the detriment of his loved ones — the parasite seemed to be most hungry for the memories of them, their laughter and the bond they shared with Shiro. Even if Shiro couldn’t keep it all to himself, he hid away the deepest parts of them and hoped the parasite would only use him and no one else to its advantage.

__

He didn’t know when he stopped feeling the Black Lion’s presence but now she was gone and he wondered if he was too, permanently this time. 

__

Now it was dead quiet, just him, his decaying consciousness and the parasite.

_   
  
  
_

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you for reading, you!


End file.
